Finding the difficulty sweet spot

Hello readers. Sadly, my PC is still out of action while my hard drive goes back to the shop for a warranty replacement, which means no jigsaw again this week. That means we have another conversation-starter piece in its place.

Before I kick off, I'd just like to mention a bit of housekeeping. Andrew "luverly_5pam" Marshall is still running his annual Screen Play poll, and it closes at midnight on Sunday night. The topic this year is your favourite video game opening sequences, so get your ranked list of up to ten games over to Andrew ASAP.

Also, this is the first Friday in quite a while when I haven't had a Your Turn piece to run, so I've put up a (hopefully) fun and (hopefully) amusing comedy list piece to compliment this conversation starter.

. . .

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Today's chat topic was prompted by Ubisoft's awesome little touch-screen game Rayman Jungle Run getting a bunch of free additional levels late last week. The new levels are all pretty tough, and it took me a few days to get 100% on all of them.

The funny thing is that I don't as a general rule, like very difficult games. I love my first person shooters, but I almost always play them on normal, for example, and I played most of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on easy mode because normal was just too damned hard. I own a copy of Dark Souls but I have never played it because I'm too scared of it.

It got me pondering why I had so much more patience for Jungle Run than I do for other difficult games, and I think I have an answer of sorts: Jungle Run is always fair. On every run through a level, nothing ever changes, and you never get any nasty surprises. When you play Jungle Run, every time you fail it's your own fault for getting the sequence wrong.

More than dexterity, Jungle Run is a game of memorising sequences. Holding those many steps in your head and retrieving them in order - jump here, don't jump there, drop down, NOW jump - is more important than quick reflexes, though of course the reflexes certainly help too. When you forget the sequence, you fail and have to restart the level.

The question that than popped into my head was, if I like Jungle Run so much and have nailed 100% on every level, why don't have the same kind of success with Bit Trip Runner? I love the aesthetics and design of Runner, but I have found that I simply suck at it. Like Jungle Run, Runner takes a degree of dexterity and precise timing, but is primarily a game of memory. Unlike Jungle Run, I am terrible at Runner and lose patience with it quickly.

I have thought hard about why I give up after a handful of failed attempts in Bit Trip Runner but will push through twenty or more tried on a Jungle Run level, but I don't seem to have an adequate answer. The two games just have different pace and rhythm, and one works for me while the other doesn't.

On a slight tangent, while I was very excited to hear that Ubisoft will soon be publishing a high-definition remake of the 1990s platform classic Flashback, I was worried to read a quote from the developer about the difficulty of the new game: "Accessibility was brought up to current standards as was the level design that would seem rather punishing through today’s lenses if we had kept it exactly as it was." Translation: the original was too hard, so we've made the remake a bit easier.

The funny thing is that I remember Flashback being quite hard in parts (especially the game show toward the end) but never too hard, so I worry about them making the new version too easy in the name of "accessibility".

This in turn reminds me of the first Oddworld game, Abe's Oddysee. Now, that was an insanely hard game, and yet even me, Mr Too-Scared-To-Play-Dark-Souls, played it to 100% completion and saved 100% of Abe's fellow Mudokons. It wasn't a freak occurrence, either: last year I bought it from GOG.com and finished it again. (Full disclosure: I swore a LOT.)

I really don't know why it is that some highly difficult games just don't appeal to me, and others feel entertainingly challenging. I suspect that it just comes down to the mysteries of personal preference.

Over to you, readers. Are you a fan of any notoriously difficult games? Do you miss the days of "Nintendo hard" games? Do you struggle to find a comfortable "just right" sweet spot between too easy and too hard? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

- James "DexX" Dominguez

DexX is on Twitter: @jamesjdominguez

12 comments so far

I have a stab at notoriously difficult games every so often.

Shin Megami Tensei games are generally speaking pretty damn hard. Persona 3 and 4 are easier, if played on normal. Hell, Atlus games in general are pretty hard.

I also get through Fire Emblem relatively fine but then I swear a lot if I wasn't paying attention and I get someone killed. I remember one time I was farming XP from a boss in the Sacred Stones (the easiest Fire Emblem), critical chance by the enemy at 1, and I was confident my unit could survive a hit. But lo and behold, the boss deals a critical hit. I'll be swearing a lot when my copy of Awakening arrives next week.

I S ranked most of the Mega Man Zero games. When I first played it on GBA I was pretty bad at it. When I got Collection on the DS, I was adamant at S ranking everything. Due to that I'm stuck on the last mission in each game. To get S rank you have to ignore pretty much all the mechanics that could help you as it penalises your rank and you can't get hit more than once or twice or your rank drops. And seeing as the last stage also contains the boss rush...

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance I couldn't take on Hard, so I played on Normal. I still died a LOT.

Dark Souls, I gave it a go and when I stopped being patient I died repeatedly.

Commenter

Raito

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 6:38AM

Who ever thought up of the ranking system for MM Zero should be shot. It's just as painful as the Rescue the Reploids on MMX6. I can enjoy a ranking system as a way to mark skill/challenge but when your in built system forces you to not only speed and perfect run a game to get equipment/abilities (which is part of the fun on an MM game) but also *penalise* you for *using* the in game upgrade system... someone should be shot.

At least the system has improved on 3 and 4. But the penalties for using the same system that made the game unique (ie. cyber elves) pretty much made the whole system pointless. Thats just added pointless frustration

Commenter

RocK_M

Location

I want chinese take-away!

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 10:32AM

I think I used to like challenging games but I'm a bit over them. I don't mind graded games where they progress to being harder (if they are implemented correctly), but nearly every game I play is on normal and never gets played on hard. I think I'm worried about the game becoming too hard and tough that I give up playing.

My brother often plays between normal and hard, depending on whether he just wants to play and finish the game and enjoy his time.

Dark Souls has become my PoS worry. I would like to play again with the conscious of taking it slow and easy and just trying to keep my cool.

The most strangest experience I've had with difficulty was with the original Mortal Kombat on the SNES. At one stage playing on very easy, I could not win. It seemed like every fight was rigged and I was losing. So I did the opposite and cranked it to the hardest difficulty and beat the game.

Commenter

Joka

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 7:42AM

I would say Dark Souls is excruciatingly fair. Every level is exactly the same every time you run it, so while there are plenty of nasty surprises, you only get surprised once.

That said, goddamn that Iron Golem.

Commenter

Sam

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 8:41AM

Dark Souls is definitely fair most of the time, and the majority of challenges in it can be negated by being careful and examining your environment. See scorch marks in the floor? There's probably a dragon waiting to strike. See what looks like an arrow trap at the end of the hall? Check around for where the pressure plate is.

Even the 'goddamn Iron Golem' you complain about is trivialise by summoning the NPC Iron Tarkus, who will very happily kill that boss without any intervention from you at all. He's been known to knock the boss off the edge of the arena.

Commenter

Daniel

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 12:16PM

Bah! I don't need help, I only play hollowed. (Because I don't want to be invaded).

Commenter

Sam

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 5:04PM

The new work filter blocks gamasutra and I'm having difficulty extracting a working link I trust enough to post, but on the release of Rayman Origins there was a great piece that covers the concepts behind the difficulty and the design that went into it. The article is titled "Rational Design: The Core of Rayman Origins" and google should bring it up for you pretty quickly. I know Origins isn't Jungle Run, but I'd hazard a guess the same design theories and principles are followed in both.

I do note that while you say it's "fair" that nothing changes in a level of Rayman, you criticised Dishonored for doing just this - the guards have the same conversations and make the same motions over and over. I remember because I pointed out this can be important for planning and timing in a stealth game, and it's equally true for platformers.

Ultimately, I think a designer has a responsibility to introduce the concepts, the goals and boundaries of their game to the play in such a way that it becomes clear to the player the ways in which they may best approach the game and formulate their strategy. When players criticize a game for being "unfair" it's generally because the designer has broken that rule. They haven't clearly articulated how it is supposed to be played, or have indicated a strategy, only to punish the player for attempting to capitalise on it.

I really dislike memorised timing / sequence games - always have. Mario Bros was essentially a sequence game when you tried to race through the levels and I think it was this that turned me off the concept.

The uniform sequence means that it's no longer a game to me, it's just the same as the old Simon Says machines. Learn the sequence, press the buttons. I love games that are about variety, and the unexpected occurring at any time. I just don't understand why people subject themselves to a chore (while swearing a lot) in the name of enjoyment? Surely you can just as easily get a job that is a chore and requires a bunch of swearing, but at least for that you get paid.

That said, I don't love insanely difficult games either. I like progression and I don't have much time in my life for gaming, so having to repeat sections turns a game into just another chore. I want to be challenged, but I don't want to be punished over and over and over and over....

Commenter

TC

Date and time

April 19, 2013, 9:35AM

Manuganu is good with its stop button which means i will actually play it and can enjoy the efforts of the artists etc. I can only imagine energy drinks are to blame for other running games popularity.What it needs is a speed control option. Ideally a game mixing it and fantashooting would be best as just blasting things gets old quick too. Can anyone suggest a game like that? Forget the running part though if i wanted to run i would. Like a fps with view options and levels to explore the odd baddie to blast treasure to collect. I had a good idea for one with a squirrel trying to reclaim a tree or forest from lizards who uses objects from his magic nut-sack ;)

Commenter

guvna

Date and time

April 21, 2013, 4:06PM

I should look into the Rayman Runner game.... it sounds like my cup of tea! For me, I love challenge. I find games too easy normally, and there's that feeling of satisfaction when I finish a level that's been tormenting me for 20 minutes of frustration.

Your comparison to Bit Trip Runner is quite apt I think, although I'm conflicted about your comment on the game being "primarily a game of memory". Every obstacle gives you enough time to react to it - I'd often make it through levels first go, with the odd mistake due to poor timing on my part. That said, I can see where the comment of memory comes from - I just feel like 'primarily due to memory' better fits games where floors fall from underneath you unexpectedly, or other experiences that don't give you a chance first go.... *shrugs*

As for me, I'm much more forgiving with difficulty that stems from good design, rather than crappy controls etc. I'm not a big fan of shooters' artificial difficulty (ie: spend 10 minutes ducking out from cover to kill people one-by-one, as per COD's highest difficulty. That's just not fun imo). Difficult platformers seem to manage this the best I think (Super Meat Boy etc), but that's also due to my exposure. Oh, and games like Trials too - difficulty that stems from skill at the game, not other factors.

Am still intent on trying Dark Souls at some point. Every one of my friends has told me it would fit me perfectly haha.

Ahhh... this post is a shambles.... but served as good procrastination fuel all the same!